


ingenio natura suo

by aliferlia



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: F/F, IS 7 AM A TAG, is rusalka a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 20:50:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1111370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliferlia/pseuds/aliferlia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antoinette and Anastasia go to see an opera. It’s totally not Rusalka and they’re totally not in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ingenio natura suo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IWasHereMomentsAgo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IWasHereMomentsAgo/gifts).



> Just pretend that someone in Thremedon saw fit to write a Volstovic equivalent of Dvorak’s opera Rusalka, which is, in fact, about the love triangle between a prince, a princess, and a water sprite. The title is taken from Met.3.159, which section I draw on heavily throughout, and forms part of the line _artem simulaverat ingenio natura suo_ , "nature by its own ingenuity mimicked human art". This can be read as a loose sequel to [sed erat fiducia dispar](http://archiveofourown.org/works/763767).

The lord Temur had learned an admirable amount of Volstovic during Lady Josette’s sojourn in the Xi’an court, and had during the course of the most recent set of negotiations put it to good but regrettably lengthy use. He had held the floor for a good fifteen minutes already, and had devoted most of that time to a stirring expose on the unbearable condition of the Kiril Islands: the impending threat of rebellion, the strengthening independence movement, the failed crops, the ubiquity of scorpions, the _terrible_ poetry. Volstov ought by no means move to reacquire them, he explained, not when they were in such a state, but should leave them to Xi’an, which only had Volstov’s best interests at heart.

It was an excellent piece of oratory, if overlong, and I rather liked his ploy: it was precisely the sort of elegantly underhanded I would have employed in a similar situation, and had to it moreover the particular cleverness I was coming to expect from the young Emperor Mamoru’s handpicked cabinet. Stifling a yawn with practised expertise, I resolved to send then all another round of fruit baskets. Seated comfortably at the far end of the room, hand on book and book in lap, I stared dreamily out of the window as though lost in thought. It was a useful tactic that I had learned early on in this palace of glass and mirrors, for it enabled me to glimpse in the windowpane the reflection of the Esarina.

She sat at the far end of the table, straight-backed and still, those remarkable eyes of hers narrowed cautiously as she listened to the Lord Temur make some long and complex point. In the months since her husband’s deposal she had begun to set aside a great many of the mannerisms that had marked her as soft and delicate, and had begun to speak more directly, to look her adversaries politely but firmly in the eye instead of turning aside with a coy blush. Still she retained a few habits of her own: still she might pinch compulsively at her gloves when angered or upset, though her face betrayed no outward tell, or tap idly at the blue cameo that lay nestled in the hollow of her throat. I watched now as she reached up to tuck a golden curl behind her ear. With the westering sun behind her, she was glorious, a thing of light and ivory, dressed all in the colours of the sky and equipped moreover with impossible grace. This was no accident. She was well-used to picking the most advantageous lighting, the better to display her famous innovations of fashion, and her remarkable ability to strike a man silent with only the colour of her hair had served her well. She seemed like a god out of an old poem, arrayed all in blue silk and snowy lace, or a marvellous statue given the power of breath: and yet she spoke calmly and rationally, with growing authority and good courtesy, and in doing so wholly disarmed her opponents.

Here for my skills as a translator only, and even then only to assist the official interpreters should they come unstuck on a particularly contentious point of semantics, I waited and observed. This had been her role for long years, and I was happy to shoulder it now. Yet she looked to me at odd intervals: still she would raise her eyes to mine and swallow, look away, or I might glance at her and find her already watching me. She trusted me, depended upon me. In her I had the mouthpiece I had once, in my youth, desired above all else, desired so dearly as to get and bear a child for the sake of power. That had been a rash gambit, I knew now, but one I had never regretted. My son had found his place, earned by merit rather than won through blood, and I had found mine. Here at the Esarina’s side I could see the wheels of the world turning and shifting, all the many varied workings of men laid out before me like engines striving and breaking against each other: here at her right hand I could see, through no Talent other than a knack for politics, a hundred shifting futures in the wake of war, and could stay or speed their fruition at need. I had always been good at a chess when I was a girl.

From somewhere down the hall, an old walnut-wood grandfather clock I knew well began to strike, and, as though it were a stone dropped into a pond, set off a rippling chain of sound as, one by one, the rest of the clocks scattered all throughout the Bastion woke to chime the hour. There came a powerful upwelling relief from the little assembly, nothing more than a few softs sighs and slumped shoulders to the unTalented mind, but to me as tangible as a rush of water or breath of wind. Slowly, the negotiations began to close for the day. Notes were shuffled and bound up in leather cases, formalities exchanged, hands shaken and heads bowed, as one by one the dignitaries were escorted from the room and to their chambers.

Anastasia alone remained where she was, sorting through the sheaves of notes taken by her scribe, tapping at a map of the coast. The distracted blur of her thought gathered grey and incomprehensible: but as I approached, and she looked up, her discomfort cleared like a chord resolving, and a deep fondness replaced it.

‘You were right, you know,’ she said, softly, even as I did my best to distance myself from her thought. ‘The Kiril Islands may well be a greater liability than they are an asset, but I suspect that Temur may be wilfully misrepresenting the threat of the independence movement in order to deter us. If the islands were really so unstable, the Emperor could have passed them back to us and been rid of the trouble. Regardless of any risk, to have them back would be a great sign of goodwill between Xi’an and Volstov, not to mention a boost in morale for the people.’

‘To have the pearl trade safely in our own hands again would not go much amiss, either,’ I pointed out, at which she gave a sigh and nodded. ‘He will concede soon, I think,’ I added, meaning Temur. ‘There may a settlement still to negotiate, but I do think that we will win this. You are right to risk it.’

She squared off the last of her papers and sat back on the broad bench, breathing out heavily as she did so. Her posture never flagged, nor would I have expected it to, but she did allow herself the small respite of closing her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

Her hair in the afternoon sunlight was, frankly, heartbreaking, and I had not the time to waste on such thoughts. ‘I mean that,’ I added, firmly, both to keep my mind on business, and because she seemed to doubt me. ‘It was good policy. They will tell you otherwise, but they will be wrong.’

‘Don’t let’s talk about it anymore,’ she said, shaking her head, keeping her eyes closed. She looked very frail, very thin, although I knew it was only the lingering shock of this winter past, which had seen her lose a husband and gain an empire: we were well into summer, now, and she had survived the worst of it. ‘I am dreadfully tired, for one thing, and you’ve been on your feet rushing about all day, for another. Come and sit down.’

I could feel the beginnings of a headache clustering grey behind her temples as clearly as though it were my own, and a welling sympathy rose painfully to flood my breast. Gathering my skirts, I moved soundlessly to sit next to her on the little bench. I had meant only to be a comforting presence at her side, but she gave a great sigh and leaned against me, fitting her head to my shoulder. The ache in my heart only swelled. I was too old for this sort of thing, too old and responsible besides for far too much. She smelled very sweetly of jasmine and rosewater, which she used for her toilet every morning, and of the particular amber-coloured lumps of resin she would warm over a brazier and dab at her throat and wrists. I could not help but put my arm about her waist and settle my chin atop her golden head.

The headache was easy enough to quell, once I found its root. ‘Oh, that’s better already,’ she said, quietly, all her limbs loosening against me. Her skin was very cold, but I had expected that: she suffered dreadfully from chilblains during the winter, and bruised like apple blossom. ‘Thank you.’

I sighed, and, knowing all the while that I should, allowed myself to smile into her hair. ‘I have my uses.’

She gave a soft chuckle. ‘They are many and varied,’ she murmured against my shoulder, ‘and only some of them are illegal.’

‘Some?’ I asked, easily, but deliberately. The daily life of a velikaia can never be easy, and even the least talented of my kind require a great deal of training to ensure that they neither injure nor insult either others or themselves. To plumb private thought necessitated a concerted force on will on my part, but even for to me to avoid being surrounded by a constant dull murmur of alien impressions took a lifetime’s worth of hard-learned concentration. I wished, very dearly, to know the full extent of the Esarina’s feelings toward me just then, and that was precisely why I could not allow myself even a glimpse of them: precisely why I kept the conversation frivolous, why I did my best to lighten her mood. ‘You wound me. A solid seventy per cent, I’d make it.’

‘Well, don’t tell the Esarina - she’ll have you thrown in jail, and then however will you come to the opera tonight?’

‘I’ll be devastated to miss it,’ I said, drily, and was pleased when she gave that same soft chuckle.

It was all so different from the many strained conversations we had had over the years, each one a new and subtler weapon with its own hidden barbs and secret poisons: so different from the carefully-worded snares we had laid, across dinner tables and at decadent soirées, in parlours and garden parties, less to trap and interrogate, for we had known all each other’s secrets already, and more in our own misery to wound. This new game of ours was just as careful, just as strict, but far gentler. My purpose now was to aid her whom before I had sought in a thousand small ways to thwart, but in doing so I could not allow my concern to overreach itself. It had been so much easier to disguise one passion as another, I reflected, with bitterness.

Still, our new closeness could not be helped. In a much-publicised turn of events following the Esar’s discreet deposal and subsequent removal to the countryside a few months previously, I had become his wife’s closest advisor. She relied on me more and more these days, not only in matters of state, but also during the many social fixtures and appearances that were required of her. We had attended garden parties and soireés, sent our best wishes to scores of young debutantes, attended the military parade ground, and visited far more art-houses than I cared for. This evening’s engagement was only the latest after a busy few months of confirming the Esarina’s status as a valued party guest. It was a new opera, they said, very sad and very beautiful, guaranteed to be the hit of the season It had been drawn from Old Volstovic legend and told of a poor cold water-sprite in love with a prince who would not have her, but preferred the warmer touch of a human queen - who, to judge by the posters plastered across half of Miranda, sported both a wine-red dress and a distinctly unsubtle resemblance to my younger and more handsome self. The Esarina had laughed richly on first hearing the plot some days previously, and had capped some clever little line of Ramanthine verse about the relationship between art and nature to applause and amusement: had caught my eye from across the room, given me a rueful little smile.

‘I suppose one is not really any sort of politician at all until there at least three operas written about all one’s tragic entanglements. We are as much a source of entertainment for Thremedon as we are its rulers,’ she said to me now, and sat up a little way, straightening her shoulders and folding her hands in her lap. I recognised this as the beginning of a performance, but did not anticipate why until she gave a bright and carefree laugh, very different from that warm chuckle, and began to lay her strategy for defence. ‘Believe me, I’ve heard far worse. You know the one about the minstrel, the margrave, and th’Esarina, don’t you? And do you remember the year everyone was singing that dreadful drinking-song about what we got up to whenever Nico was away on diplomatic visits?’

‘Oh, was that about the two of us?’ I asked, playing along. ‘I was quite convinced they meant that I was carrying on a salacious affair with the _dragon_ Anastasia. That makes a good deal more sense.’

She called my bluff, of course. ‘It was called _The Esarina’s Esarina_ ,’ she pointed out, raising a delicate eyebrow, and scoffed at me when I offered her a smirk. ‘Really, my dear, for a velikaia, your grasp of popular culture is lamentably poor. That settles it - we can’t afford to miss the opera. It’s a much-needed instalment in your education.’

I had had paperwork I had thought to do that evening, not to mention a rare autobiography of a favourite poet I had been wanting to read for a good long while. ‘There’s really no chance of my getting out of this, is there?’ I asked, but with the best grace I could manage, and then, lest she fear that I meant to abandon her, ‘I never was over-fond of opera.’

I had meant to make it a joke, but she reached up, her sleeves whispering like rain, and touched my cheek. ‘Please don’t make me go alone, dearest?’ she asked, quietly.

She was plying her charm on me, and, in keeping with the great historical fact of most of our dealings, I resented it as much as I admired it. If we had been born three hundred years before we would have been rival warlords who died on each other’s steel, I supposed in a moment of fancy, or pirate queens always at each other’s throats, or poets competing for laurels and patrons both in the song-houses of the Old Ramanthe: but it happened that we had been born to an age of skirts and social graces. I battled her as best I knew how. I had suppress my admiration for twenty-five years, and for the sake of my pride as a politician did not intend to let it get the better of me now, especially not over anything so frivolous as a night out on the town.

And so, ‘I’d never dream of doing anything so impolite,’ I assured her, brisk as a school mistress, and stood up. ‘I have business to finish up first, and you require at least half-an-hour’s lie-down and a strong cup of tea before you do anything else. Do you understand me, or do I have to call for Adéline and have her escort you?’

‘You show such authority, my lady,’ she said, but the mischief was back in her voice, and as she got to her feet she allowed me to help her. Her elbow was bony in my palm, and very cold, the bones of her wrist very frail: her eyes, deeply creased about the corners as much with merriment as with age, were painfully blue. In that room of mirrors and broken light she was everywhere, pale and radiant and full of grace. ‘When last I looked, of the two of us, I was the Esarina.’

‘Not for want of trying on my part,’ I reminded her, so that her eyebrows shot up in scandalised delight, and she had to press her lips tight together to keep from cackling. ‘You’re annoyingly difficult to be rid of. Now, are you going to let yourself get some rest, or do I have to smother you with a pillow?’

She laughed and gave me a very indelicate shove. ‘No need for that,’ she assured me. ‘Assassination attempts always ruin me for opera afterwards.’

I loved her unbearably.

 

* * *

 

The air was warm as new milk outside our carriage when we set out at last, stars struggling against the redlit glamour of Miranda’s winding streets: a loose knot of late starlings swung low on the wing, I remember, seeming somehow to stand so still on the air that I wondered for a moment whether all the world had not stilled with them. In my breast was the sort of sharp and nameless ache that I had never before associated with anything save music. I could not name any cause for it now, other than it was summer, and that I was growing old and nostalgic at last, and that Anastasia was sitting opposite me. The branches of the trees in the fullness of their summer flowering all about could have been cames in a leadlight fixture, framing all the hundred stained-glass colours of the air: I pretended that the sky was the dome a great cathedral, starred with lamps and guarded by watchful saints and heroes, and that she and I were travelling alone together in an old echoing space, safe from the world.

‘Oh, look,’ she said, suddenly, and raised one silkshod finger to the glass. ‘The rabbit.’

A fat moon the colour of cream hung low in a sky that was richly blue and hemmed with dusty red, while the windows that hung like lanterns all about shone like burnished gold. ‘Is this your ridiculous story about the rabbit in the moon again?’ I asked.

‘It’s not ridiculous at all,’ she replied, primly. ‘It’s the way everyone tells it, outside of the city. It was a Ramanthine story, as I understand. My old nurse told it me when I was a child. The rabbit misbehaved, telling lies about death, and so he was sent to the moon. It makes far more sense than a man in the moon.’ Still she stared out of the carriage window, the curve of her face lit now blue, now gold, now grey by the passing lights. She was much the better for the little space of rest she had taken: I could feel even from across the carriage that she was in a peaceable mood, although a stern resolve I could not quite fathom lay just beneath. She was like an actor preparing for a difficult role, I supposed, her concentration every bit as fierce as that of the musicians and dancers no doubt already preparing to perform that evening’s show. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it? I do love Thremedon, even through everything: it is worth all the fuss and the gossip, to be here.’

‘I suppose I do too,’ I owned. Her perfume hung all about, that same sweet resinous scent, that put me in mind of far cedar-forested hills in blue twilight. ‘Relentlessly tedious though the damned place may be, not to mention full of packs of inebriated poets who can’t rhyme to save their lives.’

The carriage rattled over an errant cobblestone. ‘Oh, darling, you don’t mean that,’ the Esarina exclaimed. ‘Well, certainly, there is an awful lot of bad poetry, but apart from that.’

‘Don’t I just,’ I retorted, quite content to play the part of the derisive cynic to her dreamy optimist, if those were the roles she chose that evening. A script made things far simpler for me. ‘If I had any sense I’d retire, go out and join old Owen on the Greylace Estate, watch him picking quarrels with our friend Mistress Fleet for the rest of my days. I never forgave Nico for sending her away, you know - she was the only halfway decent conversation to be had, some days.’

She looked away from the window at last, found my eyes in the half-dark, cocked her head. ‘And what should I do without my Antoinette, hmm?’

Her sharp-edged sallow face was beautiful to me in the moonlight, all her bones delicate as a bird’s. There had been a time, a quarter of a century and more before, when I had prepared myself to hate her, and, on finding that I could not, resolved to take all that was hers instead, wanting almost to spite her for being clever, and lovely, and earnest, and above all for being kind. She was nearer fifty than not, now, and I was the only one she allowed close enough to see the grey at her temples, which in public she concealed artfully with clasps of ivory and lapis and, in the springtime, sprays of new blossom. Tonight she wore only the simple white gold wreath that she saved for lengthy public appearances, lightweight as it was but striking, worked in a filigree like leaves and set with flowers of nacreous shell. This was how soldiers must feel, I supposed as I watched her now, and thought of every man who had ever fallen choking on his lover’s blood in battle, every queen who had died in her lieutenant’s arms. I would have taken poison for her, died on steel, my bravery sprung from the love of hers.

‘You would do great things, of course,’ I managed, turning away to frown at the moon, trying for the hundredth time to pick out the rabbit that she claimed to see in the pattern of shadows on its yellow face. I was supposed to be poised and unshakeable, I reminded myself in despair: had made a career of it, in fact: but I had never had any sense of self-preservation around her. I parried as best I could. ‘Or you could come with me. Don’t you think it would be nice, to retire to the countryside one day? You would look so well in riding jodhpurs.’

‘ _No one_ looks well in riding jodhpurs, you ridiculous old woman, and you are terribly bad at flirting.’

‘Your husband didn’t think so.’

She gave a loud and very rude snort, and fell back against her seat, wheezing with soundless laughter. Shocked at myself, I made to apologise, but she flapped a hand and shook her head, her cheeks a very unattractive red, her wreath knocked all askew. ‘Oh, you are the _worst_ ,’ she managed at last, rubbing at her eyes and smearing their kohl a little, ‘the _absolute_ worst. You ought to have been exiled along with Mistress Fleet.’

I reached across and righted the diadem, pushed her hair back into place. ‘For crimes of terrible flirtation against the state?’

She regarded me gently. ‘For exactly that.’

The opera house stood at the very heart of Miranda, a great ramshackle old place that had been renamed thrice over the past sixty years. Still it was beautiful, after its own fading fashion, and its current contractors had done their best to refurbish it and keep it presentable the year before, sprucing up the older rocaille masonry with new gilding, nailing shut the mysterious doors that led away into old and unsafe corridors with ceilings as tall as the sky. Its broad green domes were all lit with golden lights, and its interior of cloudy marble and rich gold was lushly decked with velvet curtains in patriotic red, couches of brocade and exotic hothouse plants each equipped with their own little Basquiat-built charm to ensure their survival in cold Volstovic climes. The vast hallways were filled with Thremedon’s elite, among them perhaps three sincere music lovers: most were aristocrats and margraves and assorted social climbers, here to make an impression, or else drawn by the opera’s clever use of political scandal.

As was proper, the Esarina was escorted away from the crowds and along discreet secret stairways, accompanied by eight very imposing members of the Bastion guard, most of whom were Talented in some appropriately defensive way, and all of whom had been personally screened by myself: but the shadowy little box, nearest to the stage, she and I had to ourselves, and here we made ourselves comfortable as we could while knowing all the while that we were on show. It was to great applause from below that she entered, and to general merriment that she treated the murmuring audience in their red velvet seats to a smile and a wave. It could easily have been any other night at an endorsed by imperial patrons, for she and Nico had made a great point of supporting the City’s artistic endeavours, and had attended the better ballets and grand tragic productions whenever their schedule had allowed: but here it was I who was on show.

Anastasia had about her that evening the particular powerful glamour of an actress or performer, smiling happily, clinging to my arm at every opportunity as the orchestra began to tune itself in winding scales and sombre thirds, leaning over the balcony to wave at a friend or point something out to me, touching my wrist, whispering in my ear. We could not be seen as enemies. We must be seen unified and adored, so secure in our friendship, and in our hopes for Volstov’s future, that we could quite comfortably watch our lifelong spat exaggerated on stage and laugh over it in good spirits. I remember still how she waved a gloved hand to give the conductor her blessing. I could smell the asbestos in the safety curtain even from where we sat.

I suppose that the show was pretty enough, enhanced as it as with the very latest advances in stage-lighting and equipped with exquisite sets. The wings were hidden by shadowy shapes of trees all hung with misty gauze and netted lights, while a stream of blue tulle cascading down the rocks in the foreground where paper lilies and clever muslin roses had been so artfully arranged that I could almost believe that I was looking into a grotto of living stone, far away in some secluded forest. The dancers and chorus in their pale trailing skirts could easily have been faerie figures, grown out of springwater and pale foam, and many of them were crowned with the same glittering lights, their trains all sewn with flowers and crystal dewdrops.

It was all a bit trite and storybookish, I felt, but the Esarina sat entranced as the story began, chin in hand like a child, and gave little sighs of wonder or amusement every so often. They had cast some very young and pale-haired singer as the rusalka, whose prettiness was nothing to the Esarina’s profound beauty, but whose voice was sweet enough and smooth as glass. Though a faerie, she was in love with a human man, a gallant prince who was renowned for his dragon-hunting exploits (this earned a rather vindictive laugh from the audience), and so she enlisted the help of a witch and several obvious caricatures of popular Thremedonian milliners and dressmakers in order to transform herself into a human princess worth loving: but, as was revealed just at the end of the first act, with a great melodramatic welling of violins, the prince was in love already!

‘Sentimental drivel,’ I announced, loudly, to the Esarina, when the curtain fell and the lights rose for the interval. ‘That girl looks nothing like you, and there’s a good deal too much singing for my taste.’

‘Hush,’ she said, and leaned in toward me, one hand on my arm, so that it looked as though we were conferring like good friends. ‘They’ve made me into a perfectly charming little water sprite, and I’m very excited to see what happens next, and you’re not to ruin it for me, you great spoilsport.’

‘You honestly are enjoying it, aren’t you?’ I asked, feeling my annoyance soften somewhat. The lights of the opera house glittered in her golden wreath, in the little scattered pearls on her skirt, in the water-white silk of her sleeves. ‘You always did like fairytales.’

She laughed ostentatiously, never forgetting that although the curtain had fallen on the concert, the two of us were perpetually observed. ‘Perhaps, unlike you, I can appreciate art,’ she suggested. ‘Oh, don’t look so imposing! You’re doing that thing that frightens all the chambermaids, that thing where you look like a conquering goddess with ready access to thunderbolts.’ I narrowed my eyes at her, incensed, and she sighed. ‘There you go again. Hopeless.’

Her cheeks were very pink, even under her powder, and there was a light in her eyes that was all too rare. Despite the long and exhausting work of the day, she looked full of health and vigour, a fine figurehead for all the elite of Thremedon to see and trust and admire: and more important than that, far important, she looked happy. Even I could not tell how much of it was for show. The pretty smile and the bright laughter were affected, I knew, but these littler touches to my wrist or to my cheek, the childlike excitement that I read in the creases about her eyes - surely these were unconscious and sincere. Surely these were meant for me alone. The answer lay close at hand, but I would not reach for it.

She must have noticed that I had fallen silent: displeased, intent on crafting the reassuring illusion for her people that we were the closest of confidantes, she leaned in and patted my hand, laughed as though I had said something terribly funny. ‘Perhaps you’ll look less like a thunderstorm if there’s a happy ending,’ she suggested. ‘I want to see if the fairy and the princess become fast friends and escape into the woods together. Don’t they seem like they should be friends?’

 

* * *

 

They were not friends, of course: the fairy died, and the princess laughed in scorn, and I dozed off halfway through the prince’s triumphant climax. It was not until I had made my way out of the box, stiff and yawning, that I noticed that the Esarina had suddenly gone very tight-lipped and drawn: as though a light in her face had been snuffed out by exhaustion, leaving only the porcelain shell behind. It was cool here, in the empty corridors far from the crowd, and our guards maintain a respectful distance, and so I had no qualms whatsoever about reaching into an artfully-concealed pocket and presenting the Esarina with a silver flask.

‘Have a good swig of that,’ I ordered.

She downed her mouthful of brandy like a champion, handed the flask back to me with barely a grimace. ‘What have I told you about assassination attempts this early in the evening, darling?’ she asked, wryly.

It staggered me, still, to know how she trusted me. I drank off a measure of the stuff almost in defiance, as though to remind her that, all joking aside, I could very easily have poisoned her, had I cared to. ‘It’s eleven o’clock somewhere,’ I muttered, to make her laugh. ‘Come on, then, out with it! What is the Esarina’s official word on the music scene’s latest fad?’

She gave a small sigh, the tiredness returning to her eyes, and seemed to withdraw into herself like a bird ruffling its feathers in the cold: pinched the hem of her glove between finger and thumb and began to pluck at it in a gesture I knew well. I would have put my coat about her, had I been wearing one: as it was, I could do nothing but lift the red shawl from my own shoulders and drape it about her own, briskly and with a good deal of chiding, so as to allay any suspicion of tenderness. It clashed dreadfully with the delicate blue spangles of her gown, but that could not be helped.

‘It is one thing to joke about one’s private life being made into public spectacle, dolled up with witches and water sprites,’ she remarked in answer to my question, with a brave little smile that was nothing like the bright and airy laughter she had scattered graciously to her people all evening. ‘It is quite another to see it end - well, so sadly. I think I preferred the drinking songs. At least they ended with a laugh.’

My hands were still at her shoulders, her perfume sweet enough to taste, her bones very sharp beneath my palms. This was our trust, not the showy friendship and contrived laughter she had shown the world, although that served its purpose: the gathering ache in my breast, the little weary breaths she drew under my touch. I found myself suddenly violently angry at every greedy rumourmonger in all of Thremedon, for wearying her so. Whether I loved her or hated her, that passion should have been my own, not the subject of songs and plays, rumours and cruel gossip: private, the one thing of myself not given over to the sport of the City which I had served so long.

I hated to think of her rallying herself to face such a petty crowd all over again. I should have liked us to remain here, unseen in the shadows of the City: to observe all that went on below me and do my part for its preservation without being observed in return. I had had enough of being a showpiece, for all that I had sincerely enjoyed it as a young girl. Thremedon had been a grand place for me then, full of light and music and artistry, painters who wished me to sit for them, suitors who wished me to lie down, poets and philosophers who crossed wits over the origin of my beauty. Now, though I loved it all still, I would have been content with peace, for her and for myself. I really was growing old.

‘You’re doing a marvellous job of convincing them that your ending will be quite happy,’ I told her, in my very best no-nonsense tone of voice. ‘We only have to show our faces at the gala for a short while. Just a little more convincing, and we can go home for the evening and carry on pretending that Margrave Marshall’s new moustache is not a crime against the state.’

She nodded: and then leaned in against me, her head on my shoulder. My heart trembled, beating hard and shallow in my chest as a bird’s. I hated this. ‘It does help that you are here,’ she remarked, quite casually.

The loss of a lifetime’s control, when it comes at last, is always a small thing. Unprompted and without excuse save for the touch of her breath to my throat, I said, reckless as I had never been around anyone save her, ‘It does help that ultimately, the people do love you. For some of us, that makes it all a great deal more difficult.’

I remember that she did not start away, or grow stiff in my arms, or make any noise of surprise, only let out a long, shaking breath. I stared down the darkening corridor, throat thick. My hands were heavy with dread, yet I could not move. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she began -

\- and I remember, as though following a script, as though we truly were little characters on a stage or in a silly fairybook, how one of the guards approached us then, before she could answer me: how he bowed low like a little clockwork man in a music box, ignoring our not-so-private concerns, and said, ‘Highness - my Lady - you’re wanted downstairs.’

And so we parted, and composed ourselves like poetry, and prepared ourselves for the public once more.

A wide white marble stairway descended from the upper private galleries and into the broad foyer where all the most exclusive patrons of the opera had gathered in their finery, glasses in hand, to mill and talk and simper and do battle. It was into this that we would descend. The Esarina’s poise had returned as though it had never left, and that powerful light of confidence had come back into her bearing, so that even though she walked quite ordinarily at my side, still she seemed somehow to occupy a stage reserved only for herself, her path written out in dazzling limelight. She was poised and infallible as any performer under the bright lights of the foyer, the wreath of gold in her hair scattering radiance across the room.

Only my shawl, still draped about her shoulders, threw off the illusion of perfection, the red damask jarring as blood in clear water against her white shoulders. I remember I frowned, suddenly repulsed at the thought of such a private gesture made public, and was on the point of making to catch her back from the top of the staircase: but even as I reached to take her arm, she fell.

For one moment, as a cry rose up from the crowd, she teetered at the top of the stairs, caught like an insect in amber, graceful even in collapse. Then I was there, faster than I could think, to steady her, one hand catching at her arm, the other locked protectively in front of her. She slumped heavily against me, soft and small, and I held her up as best I could while the crowd gasped and sighed and began to applaud. She straightened up, laughing with a charming little embarrassed flush, and waved away offers of assistance from our guards: leaned heavily on my arm instead, red shawl and all, and began to descend the stairs.

In the broad mirrored doors set into the far wall, we glanced for a moment at ourselves as we reached the foyer floor. She was no longer young, but was no less powerful for it, and I beside her was tall and imposing as ever I had hoped in my girlhood to be. It looked almost as though I were indeed the Esarina’s Esarina, I thought, remembering that silly song, and felt that ache in my breast deepen. I held my shoulders straight and my chin high, and walked unsmiling and disdainful down the stairs at her side, as though quite ready to rip to shreds the mind of the first man unwary enough to entertain any uncharitable thought about her.

Whether or not the fall had been staged, not even I could tell, not without employing my Talent without her permission, and I had sworn never to do that. Certainly it had achieved its goal. This had been her plan all along, I saw: this was why she had insisted on my coming, had appealed to me so prettily. She never once plucked at her gloves, nor wrung her hands, but kept her fingers wrapped warmly about my elbow: and she showed, brilliantly and with superb calculation, not the brittle smile of a woman who must save face, but of a girl enjoying a night out at a party. It was blinding. If she meant for me to play along, to hoist a smile into place and put on a show of solidarity, there was no need. The devotion in my face was real, and if everyone in that room had been made a velikaia in that moment to read the depth of my loyalty to her, I would not have cared.

 

* * *

 

The Esarina’s private apartments were kept very tidy, but were quite frivolously ornamented with all manner of porcelain oddments and jewelled fripperies, the worst by far being her infuriating set of snowglobes. One contained a snowy tree and little river, one a pair of lovers ice-skating on a snowy lake, another a crouched porcelain rabbit: one, so meticulously repaired that one could barely see the cracks, held a perfect model of Thremedon, its trees and towers worked in copper and gold, its pathways in ivory. She touched each one in turn as she drifted idly into her chambers, walking so slow that I feared that she was already half-asleep: her lovely hair had come unpinned, and fell lopsided down the back of her dress, the buttons already unhooked to show the lacy-edge silk of her shift beneath. I saw this, where no one else might trespass: the shadowy state of half-undress, the bare feet and thin shoulders, the press of thumb to aching neck. Everyday I noted her small exhaustions and little : everyday I reviewed as though in catalogue the raw skin around her red-pinched knuckles, the downward flinch of her lips, the way she would turn, sometimes, still, as though to defer with a man who was no longer there. They all thought he had meant so much to us, and perhaps he had, once: she had loved him, I knew, and certainly I had desired him and his power both: but removed, his presence was barely remembered.

‘Don’t worry about me - I shall be alright without Adéline,’ she was saying now, in a quiet little voice very like the one she had used before Nico’s deposal. She was wholly faded in the dimness, once again the woman who had sat demurely at her husband’s side and worried interminably about everything. The day’s dogged work, and the evening’s performance, had together conspired to drain her wholly. I wanted to catch her up and stroke her forehead and settle her immediately into a long and restful sleep with the aid of my Talent, but could only watch from the door, close-lipped and careful. She sloughed my shawl from her shoulders and draped it across her pillow, then, having lit only a single candle, dreamwalked across to her vanity table and collapsed onto the bench.

‘You don’t seem very pleased with your triumph,’ I remarked, lowly. ‘All but securing the Kiril Islands, and continuing to prove yourself the popular monarch Thremedon’s had in centuries - a good day’s work, I’d say.’

‘Well, I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I?’ she rejoined, with something like bitterness in her tone, and tugged a pin from her hair almost violently. ‘I’m quite aware that I can be competent, you know. You needn’t sound so surprised about it.’ She camped her mouth shut over her own words, took a moment to calm herself. ‘Sorry,’ she added, awkwardly. ‘You really needn’t stay, if you don’t want to. I’m afraid I’m not very good company when I’m tired.’

I closed my eyes. ‘Neither am I,’ I said, able still even from behind closed lids to discern her - a particularly odd side-effect of my Talent that I always had found impossible to explain, the way a mind could shine in the dark. ‘Do you truly want me to go?’

‘Is it not - difficult for you, to stay?’ she asked, flinchingly, after a moment’s hesitation, so that I cringed to remember my earlier lapse, and drew myself up very proud and tall as a feeble countermeasure against foolishness. I wanted, more than anything, to open up her mind as though it were a treasured book, to read her worst fears and unwrite them. I restrained myself.

When I said nothing, she set her hairbrush down with a sharp _clack!_ and turned to face me. ‘I _am_ sorry for all the show, and all the fuss, but you _know_ that we must be seen as friends,’ she said, in that anxious, pleading way of hers that I knew so well. ‘But if there’s going to be gossip and theatre, then we must combat it in the same way. Even if they think it farce, even if it they think that behind our smiles we cannot stand each other, still we must pretend. We agreed this months ago. For Thremedon’s sake, for Volstov’s sake. Any more fear of unrest would shake the City to pieces. It is bad enough that there is no heir -’

I had had enough. Seeing nothing else for it, I unhooked the lantern from just outside the door and strode across the room to her, set it down sharply on the table-top so that we might at least perceive each other a little more clearly: then, blazing with anger, knelt very deliberately at her feet and put my hands into hers. I did not care that she was in her shift, and that she had pins sticking out of her hair at odd angles as though she were a haystack. This was the woman to whom I had pledged my loyalty, not the elegant creation of light and silk she displayed at need from the balconies of Thremedon: this was the girl who had ruined me, years ago, and to whom I still clung.

‘Bastion damn it all, Ana,’ I said, fiercely, ‘I don’t care if you have me singing the national anthem from the top of the Basquiat if you thought it might improve morale! I worry for you - I have always worried for you - you have always lived under public scrutiny, and the worst of the gossip was my fault, I know, I _know_ , but I can’t stand -’ I drew in a long breath, remembering myself, and stared down helplessly at the carpet. ‘You are amply equal to any task I can imagine,’ I tried, ‘but all the same, I wish it were easier for you.’

‘Because you love me?’ she enquired, frank and unafraid, holding fast to my hands.

‘Because I love you,’ I snapped. ‘Now _stop_ letting me say such ridiculous things and for Bastion’s sake invent a better reason for me to get up off the floor than the fact that my knees are giving in because I’m an arthritic old wreck.’

‘Do you know, I’ve never heard you sing the anthem in my life,’ she said, and the next moment I was giggling weakly into her skirts while she shook with strangled laughter. ‘Now stand up before you ruin your dress, and stop being an idiot.’

Seeing nothing else for it, I got up, heart still hammering hard in my chest, and sat down beside her. Together in the little warm circle of lantern-light, my fingers lodged against hers by the bad angle, I felt almost as though we were schoolgirls in a little candlelit dormitory, conferring in whispered undertones, stifling our giggles in terror whenever a prefect passed by. Taking her comb from its sandalwood box, I began, with a sigh of defeat, to brush her hair. My hands shook all throughout, and when I had done, I kissed the top of her forehead. She turned to me, and helplessly I kissed her mouth, and her forehead, and the corners of her eyes each in turn: the backs of her hands, and the greying hairs at her temple.

‘But my dear, do you even know all the words to the anthem?’ she asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

I kissed her mouth instead.


End file.
